Brazil's largest newspaper does not publish Facebook news after recent changes

Mark Zuckerberg, co-founder of Facebook and CEO, has said that changing algorithms announced last month will determine the priorities of <x0-> important social interactions” and personal posts instead of topics addressed by businesses, brands and media.

But the executive editor of “Folha”, Sérgio Dávila, said the move simply enabled the spread of political deinformation and the addition of fraud stories, reports The Guardian”, transmits Periscopi.

The “effectively prevents professional journalism pages by favouring personal content and opening space to distribute false news, Facebook became friendly ground for those who want to offer quality content like ours,” he said.

Dávila said the paper's move reflected “the importance of our readers falling on Facebook”, but the change of algorithm was the crucial factor, he added.

The paper said her research showed that shares, comments and consents for 10 biggest Brazilian newspapers via Facebook dropped 32% in the past 12 months.

False Facebook news interactions tripled, as interactions on professional newspaper pages dropped 17%. False news interference declined in January, following the change of Facebook algorithm, Folha said.

The paper said it will keep its Facebook page, which has 6 million followers but does not update it.

Concern about the false news is growing in Brazil ahead of the October presidential and convention elections. In January, the government said it was creating a working group to fight the false news made up of federal police officials, election court officials and prosecutors.

“Folha” is the largest newspaper in this country of 209 million people, with 285,000 printed and digital sales and 204 million pages printed last December, says the Institute of Communication Verification or IVC, an audience of nonprofit media.

But few people are using it from Facebook, said IVC.

During the last six months of 2017, access to major Brazil news pages via Facebook fell from about 9% to 7%, IVC President Pedro Silva said, citing unpublished research.

Access to Facebook news pages fell further in the week that begins on January 22nd, when a complaint was heard by former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva against a punishment for corruption and money laundering.

Facebook did not immediately respond to requests for the matter.

Brazil is the world's third largest Facebook market, with 130 million users, according to portal statistics “Statista”/Periscopi/